


an only child of the universe

by Krewlak



Series: mamma who raised me [1]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, PARENTDALEAW2K19
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2019-10-27 13:35:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17767751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krewlak/pseuds/Krewlak
Summary: Gladys Jones nee Laurence told in starts and stops.





	1. until you found me

**Author's Note:**

> I WROTE PARENTDALE! WHAT?

“Jones!” Billy shouts as he pats the shorter man on the back and guides him towards the bar. 

Gladys raises an eyebrow from her spot at the end of bar and shakes her head. It's the same every time there’s a new bunch of recruits. They’ll go through hell for the first few weeks, forget all about mom and dad and the swell girl they left behind, before Billy takes pity and drag a select few into the bar. They always drink too much and laugh too loud and forget that no means no. 

She’s putting her book into her purse and finishing off her drink with that thought in mind when the shortie from earlier sits down on the stool next to her. He’s cute. Cuter than the other grunts that Billy brings through the door. But cute isn’t enough to keep her attention, not when she knows it’s not going to last, when he’ll get shipped back out and she’ll be left in this go-nowhere town. 

“Is he always like that?” the cutie asks her as she puts her empty glass onto the bar. She shrugs and makes to leave. “What? Cat got your tongue?”

“You don’t know me, mister,” Gladys says, shaking her head. “And I don’t know you.”

“Mister? Man, I’m not old am I?” he says with a laugh that’s a little rough in all of the right ways. Gladys rolls her eyes and tries not to smile. “Pretty sure I’m only 18.”

“Doesn’t make you anything other than a mister, mister,” Gladys says because she can’t help herself. She finally starts to walk away but he reaches out to grab her wrist. Gladys flinches back and scowls.

“Sorry!” he says, holding both hands up. “Sorry.”

“Just, keep your hands to yourself, yeah?” she says as she adjusts her jacket and tries to get her hands to stop shaking. “Not nice to grab a lady without her permission.”

“And what can I do to get her permission?” he asks, leaning towards her with a little smirk. She’s pretty sure that smirk worked on every girl in his hometown. She refuses to let it work now. 

“Billy! I think your boy here needs another drink!” Gladys shouts, keeping eye contact with the cutie. He groans and covers his face when Billy starts shouting about how no friend of his is going to have an empty glass. “Have fun!”

She slips out the front of the bar and breathes in the fresh air before digging into her purse for a smoke. She can still hear Billy yelling inside. She almost feels bad for the poor guy. It was obvious that he wasn’t interested in the kind of friendship Billy Menken was offering. Not that she blamed him. She’d been on her fair share of bender nights with Billy. They rarely ended well. 

Billy always made it back to base. His newly minted friends? Not so much. 

Gladys rolls her eyes at herself and stomps out her cigarette before marching back inside and going up to the cutie. He’s staring down a shot glass that Billy is filling. There’s something queasy in his face that makes Gladys wonder what number shot this even is - she swears she was only gone for five minutes. She snatches the glass just as Billy finishes filling it to the top. 

“Bottoms up,” she cheers before tossing it back. She smiles at Billy and drapes her arm across the cutie’s shoulders. He tenses for a second before sinking into her side. Billy looks between the two of them, raising his eyebrows and smiling like a damn fool. 

“You take good care of our boy, FP,” Billy says, patting FP on the chest. “Don’t treat him too rough, Gladys.”

“Aw, Billy, you know I like a little rough,” Gladys says with a wink that has Billy howling as he stumbles away. Gladys leans down and whispers into FP’s ear. “You’re gonna wanna thank for me that.”

“Am I?” he asks as he leans his forehead against the bar. Gladys hisses and reaches forward to pull him back up. “What?”

“That bar is nasty,” she says with a laugh as she cups his face and makes him look at her. “You don’t want any skin to touch it.” 

“That’s two thank yous I owe you now,” he mutters. “Why’re you being so nice?”

“Are you saying I’m not nice?” Gladys asks. She still has her hands on his face but he doesn’t seem to mind. He presses into it almost, like a cat seeking a good scratch. She says as much and she’s greeted with a lopsided smile that makes her stomach flip over. “Come on, FP Jones. Let’s get you out of here.”

“How’d you know my last name?” he asks, narrowing his eyes at her. She doesn’t know if it’s suspicion or if he’s just that drunk but she decides that it’s another tick in the cute column. 

“Come with me if you want to find out,” she whispers before pulling away entirely and helping him stand up. He’s steadier on his feet than she expected and she’s grateful for that since she’s on the bike tonight. He trails after her into the parking lot, a hand on her lower back and hot through her shirt. 

“You know, I think you quoted the Terminator back there,” FP says as he stretches back and looks up at the sky. She watches his warily, expecting him to topple over, but he just straightens up and smiles at her. “Thanks for the rescue from Billy and the bar.”

“Anytime, Private,” Gladys says with a smirk. “Listen, you’re going to make it back to base alright?”

FP shoves his hands into his pockets and looks around the parking lot before shrugging. He snorts and waves a hand at her, “Don’t worry about me. I can walk.”

“Do you even know where you are?” Gladys asks, hating herself for asking. She’s done her good deed of the night but he gives her a shy smile that seems a little more real than the smirk from inside the bar and she knows that she’s done for. “Fuck it. Come on, Private. You’re crashing with me tonight.”

“But - and no offense - but I don’t really know you,” he says following her as she walks to her bike. He whistles and runs his hand over the handlebars. “This is nice.”

“You can either walk back to the base, try to catch a bus, or you can come back to mine and I’ll make sure you’re back before you get into any trouble,” Gladys says, giving him her best winning smile. She climbs onto the bike and that must be what seals the deal because he’s climbing and wrapping his arms around her waist. “Good choice.”

“I just want to know how she feels,” he mutters as he shifts in the seat. Gladys snorts and rolls her eyes at the obvious innuendo. “The bike, I mean. The bike.”

“You missing your baby?” Gladys asks as she gets situated. 

“Something like that,” he replies without an ounce of shame. She decides she likes that, too. “Never owned my own. Ran with a crew back home though so I was around ‘em a lot.”

She nods and tucks the information away. She knows she shouldn’t and she spends the entire ride back to her house kicking herself for it. 

He whistles again when he sees her house. Gladys isn’t sure if it’s admiration for the size or how rundown it is. She scratches the back of her neck and waves at it, “My grandmother’s house. Been abandoned since she died but it’s still okay on the inside. Free is good for me, you know?”

“Yeah, no kidding,” he replies. He tucks an arm behind his back and cocks out his hip. “You gonna show me inside?” 

“Come on, Mr Smooth,” Gladys says, gesturing him up the front steps. 

The front door sticks like usual and she gives FP a tight lipped smile. He’s inspecting the paint of the porch railing and it’s another mark in the like column. The house is cold but she knows there’s enough kerosene in the stove to warm up at least the living room. 

“Make yourself comfortable,” she says as she hurries to get the stove lit. “I’ll have this place warmed up in no time.”

“You sleep down here?” he asks, pointing at the mattress by the broken fireplace. She’d boarded it up as soon as she’d moved in. It didn’t work and was more likely to just let endless cold air in during winter and bugs during the summer. 

“Easier to stay warm down here that upstairs,” she says with a shrug that’s a far cry from how casual she wants it to be. “You too good for a mattress on the floor, Mr. Jones?”

“What’s with this mister crap?” FP asks as he drops down onto the mattress. He doesn’t both taking his boots off before laying back and closing his eyes. “I ain’t no mister.”

“So you said,” she mutters before kicking at his boot. “Don’t get mud on my sheets. Take those boots off.”

“You going to murder me and turn my bones into a windchime?” he asks as he raises his leg and reaches for the loose laces. He manages to pull the knot loose on each foot before dropping his legs back down. Gladys watches with an amused smirk as he toes his boots off, managing to keep his socks on, with his eye closed the entire time. “You going to bash my knees in so I can’t run away?”

“You watch too many movies, you know that?” Gladys asks as she heads into the kitchen for a beer. 

“We got this drive in back home,” he replies, words slurring together with sleep and drunkenness. “Only thing to do in little old Riverdale during the summer.”

“And the winter?”

When she comes back, FP is snoring gently with his mouth hanging open. She scoffs and rolls her eyes before getting comfortable in her lazy boy chair and cracking open the beer. She should sleep. It’s late and there’s no calling out of work the next day just because she’s a moron who invited a stranger to sleep in her bed. 

She doesn’t pay attention to the time, just sips her beer and watches FP sleep. His face is a lot softer now that he’s not awake. Softer and sweeter. She wants to keep looking, wants to map out each crease of his face. It’s a dumb urge. One she’s felt before. She knows that it’ll pass, that he’ll go back to the base and get shipped out and she’ll never see him again. 

Still. Gladys takes the opportunity for what it is and kneels down on the mattress next to FP. She traces the shape of his eyebrow and the curve of his lip with her finger, doing her best not to wake him up. She shifts a little, brushing her knuckles along the edge of his buzzcut. It’s enough for him to shift around, hand reaching up to bat her fingers away, and mumble, “Back off, Freddie.”

“Ain’t no Freddie here,” Gladys says with another smile. FP slowly opens his eyes and blinks at her. He looks around the room but makes no move to get off the mattress. “That your brother?”

“Something like that,” FP says, rubbing a hand down his face. He looks at her again and there’s a new calculating look in his eye that she adds to the likes that she’s keeping count of in her head. “If you’re not a Freddie, mind telling me what your name is?”

“You telling me you’ve forgotten already, handsome? After the night we shared?” she asks, smiling bright at the way his eyes widen for a second. “Don’t worry, kid, your virtue is intact.”

“One: I ain’t no kid and two: my virtue is the last thing on my mind,” FP replies with a crooked smile that’s definitely growing on Gladys. “You do this often?”

“Do what?”

“Drag home drunk grunts?”

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “Not often.”

“Then why do it with me? If I remember right, you weren’t too interested in being friendly,” FP says slowly. He puts a hand on her knee and looks up at her with raised eyebrows. His palm is hot through her jeans but she doesn’t move his hand, just watches the way his thumb moves back and forth over her thigh. “You’re being awfully friendly now.”

“Billy Menken is a jackass,” Gladys says with a shrug. “You should find better friends on base than him.”

“What about friends off-base?” he asks with the sexy smirk that is starting to batter down her own defenses. “I could always do with one of those.”

“My last name is Laurence,” Gladys says suddenly, waiting for the ball to drop. 

He frowns a little before it clicks, “Your dad is Sgt. Laurence?”

“The one and only,” she says, shaking her head. “Still want to be friends?”

“Your dad is a piece of work, you know that?” he says with a laugh that’s a little too bitter. 

“I grew up with the bastard, didn’t I?” she snaps, glaring at him.

“You tell me that to scare me off, then?”

“Did it work?”

He sits up and kisses the corner of her mouth. She freezes and he doesn’t pull away very far to look her in the eye. She bites her lip and he touches the stars by her eye. She leans into his palm a little and she’s treated with a smile that actually reaches his eyes. 

“You’re something else Gladys Laurence,” he says softly. 

“You don’t even know me.”

“Want to know you,” he replies before leaning in and kissing the other corner of her mouth. He slides a hand to the back of her neck and holds her still as he kisses different spots of her face. His breath is warm against her skin and smells like cheap whiskey. “If you want?”

“Yeah,” she mutters and it’s painfully true how much she wants right now. “Yeah, I want.”


	2. that ultra kind of love

She grows up in a small town. The smallest of towns. Too small for the army base that sucks up all the men and dries out all the women, spitting out half-formed people that drift in and out. Daddy works there. Spine straight and mouth constantly pressed into a thin line. Gladys doesn’t know if he’s always been this too-straight man, this puckered tight man who doesn’t smile at Gladys nearly as much as she smiles at him. 

He must have been different once for Momma to fall in love with him. Gladys can see that man who swept her mother off her feet and away from her big Utah family. When he dances her around the living room while a record plays and Momma’s cheeks turn pink. When he makes Momma giggle with a whisper in her ear. When he pulls the laundry off the line while Momma is folding so that she doesn’t have to. 

Gladys tries to be the clean, pretty princess that Daddy has always dreamed of having. She tries to earn her own smiles and her own secrets whispered into her ear and her own dances in the living room. She tries to keep her mary janes clean and helps Momma around the house and stays quiet when he’s having one of, what Momma calls, his grey sky days. 

She tries and she tries but she’s always failing, always falling short. She can’t help the skinned knees and black eyes from picking fights that she can never finish. She gets used to the tired sigh he gives her when she comes home with muddy shoes and another pair of ruined tights.

-

Gladys is thirteen and pulls at the skirt of her dress. She hates wearing dresses, hates wearing tights, hates wearing the Mary Janes that only come out for church. She hates everything about this day. 

“Gladys! Let’s go!” her father calls from the bottom of the stairs. Gladys can hear the slight slur in his voice, the one that’s been there since Mama walked into the lake. “I don’t want to be late!”

She comes down the stairs with a sneer on her face, “Are you sure you should be driving?”

Sgt Laurence gives her a long look that has Gladys apologizing quickly. He huffs and straightens the fit of his uniform before marching out of the house, expecting Gladys to follow after without complaint or delay. Which she does, of course. On today of all days, Gladys can at least do that. 

The ride to the church is a quiet one. They listen to a baseball game on the radio, roll the windows down, pretend they’re not going to a funeral. Not this funeral at least. Any other one but this one. 

The parking lot is already full and Gladys can’t imagine who they all are. Her mother didn’t have many friends and they didn’t have much family in Toledo. Her sisters were all still in Utah and they didn’t talk in the thirteen years that Gladys has been alive. 

“Are you going to be okay in there?” Pop asks, hands still gripping the steering wheel even though the car is turned off. He squints in the sunlight and lets out a long sigh. “Gladys?”

Gladys looks out the window at the small chapel. They still have their Easter decorations up from last week’s service. It makes the day so much sadder, seeing the brightly colored flowers and the signs of spring. She bites her lip and nods once before getting out of the car. Pop follows after her and they head into the church one after the other. 

Pop leads them to the front of the church and Gladys does her best not to look at the people that they pass. She can feel their stares though, can hear their whispers. Their voices echo through the small church even if Gladys can’t make out what they’re saying. Pop sits them down in the front pew next to Mama’s sisters. Gladys hadn’t even known they were coming, wouldn’t even know them to be her aunts if it weren’t for the long straight hair the same shade of brown as Gladys’s and longer, straighter skirts that are obviously homemade. 

As soon as the preacher starts talking, Gladys tunes out. She doesn’t want to hear what he has to say about her mother. He doesn’t want to hear some stale passage from a book about how much better it is on the other side. Gladys doesn’t care how much better it is. She’s here and Mama isn’t and none of it is right. 

Pop puts his hand on her lower back, pushing her up and off the pew. They slowly head towards the open casket and Gladys holds her breath. It’s not something she wants to see, not something she needs to see, but she knows that her father had a different opinion on the matter. 

“It builds character, Marge,” Pop had hollered on the phone earlier that week. “I don’t give a damn about decency. The morgue said we could have an open casket and that’s what I’m going to do.”

Gladys finally exhales when they’re at the casket. She breathes out and lets her eyes drift downwards. It doesn’t look like her mother. Her mother would never wear that much makeup. Would never wear her hair curled like that. Would never look so prim and proper. That wasn’t her mother and Gladys decides that the body in the casket isn’t her mother either. Her mama is somewhere else. Somewhere warm and sunny like she always dreamed of, always whispered into Gladys’s ear as they guessed the shapes that the clouds made in the blue sky.

“Keep moving, Gladys,” Pop says softly, hand on her lower back. He pushes her forward and Gladys digs her heels in a little, reaching out to grab the edge of the coffin. Pop huffs and digs his knuckle into her back, trying to urge her forward. Gladys isn’t done, though. She’s not done staring down at the empty shell that used to be her mother. She wants to memorize every inch of this poor imitation of her mother. “Don’t make a scene. You’re done.”

Gladys doesn’t fight back this time. 

The service ends quickly and everyone silently files out of the church to the gravesite. Gladys stays long enough to toss a handful of dirt into the open grave before spinning on her heel and marching away. Her father doesn’t even try to stop her this time. Her aunts whispering amongst themselves at the disrespect that Gladys shows. 

She pulls out the cigarettes that she keeps in the secret pocket of her purse not caring if anyone sees her. It’s not like she isn’t already the embodiment of disappointment, growing up in that house with that mother, with that father. She knows what the people around town whisper to each other when they think she’s not listening. She knows the rumors that flew around town when her mother’s body was dragged out of the lake. A little cigarette smoke isn’t going to do anymore damage. 

“You know your mother would hate to see you smoking, Gladys,” a soft voice says from behind her. Gladys just inhales deep and blows the smoke over her shoulder. There’s a delicate cough and a soft hand curling around her wrist, thin fingers plucking the cigarette from her hand. “So disrespectful.”

Gladys turns on her heel, ready to scream her head off, ready to curse out whoever thought they could mother her on today of all days. The words dry up in her throat when she sees the long, dangling necklaces that she swore were still in her mother’s jewelry box and the same soft green eyes that always smiled at her when she got home from school. Gladys squints in the sun and the woman’s facial features come into focus and it’s not Mama. Of course it isn’t. It’s just one of the nameless aunts that had never bothered to reach out before today. 

“I’m Norma,” the woman says. She doesn’t offer a hand to shake or a hug or anything that might resemble comfort on a day like today. “Your aunt.”

“I don’t have any aunts,” Gladys says just to be spiteful, just to be mean. “If I did, I would certainly have met them before today. Before my mother died.”

“You mean before she killed herself,” Norma clarifies and Gladys jerks back like she’s been slapped. “Might as well be honest about it since you’re being so damn mean. She filled her pockets with rocks and walked into the lake like Virginia Wolfe. Jenny always was the dramatic one out of all of us.”

“What do you want?” Gladys asks, voice barely above a whisper. She reaches back into her purse and pulls out another cigarette. Norma just raises an eyebrow at her but Gladys ignores it as she lights up. Her hands are shaking and everything about the sunny afternoon feels wrong. Feels worse than the day Pop pulled her out of school to explain in simple terms that Mama was dead. “You come over here just to give me shit?”

“Mommy always said that you raise a child outside of the church and you were bound to raise a demon straight from hell,” Norma says, looking Gladys up and down. Gladys is sure she’s taking note of her dress that barely touches her knees, the scuffs on her mary janes, the run on the shin of her stockings. “Guess she was right about that.”

Gladys rolls her eyes and turns her back on Norma again. She doesn’t need this. Doesn’t want this. Not from some mystery aunt that’s never said a word to her in her life. The rest of the funeral is wandering away from the grave site. Gladys isn’t sure how many people are going to come by the house for the wake. Their neighbor, old lady Menken, has offered to get the house ready for them by putting out the nice china and sandwiches and potato salad. Gladys doesn’t want these strangers in her house, doesn’t want them trampling through the place where all of her memories with her mother are. 

“You can glare at them all you want but you aren’t the only one who lost her,” Norma says from behind her. She puts her soft hand on Gladys’s shoulder again and squeezes tight. “You lost her today. We lost her years ago. Think about that, Gladys Laurence.”

Gladys doesn’t say anything as Norma walks away to join her sisters. The other four of them are watching Gladys across the parking lot, whispering amongst themselves. Gladys can barely tell the difference between their faces and she thinks she understands why Mama ran away all those years ago. With long brown hair and their matching green eyes showing their distrust, their doubt, from a hundred yards away, Gladys wants to run away just as bad. 

**Author's Note:**

> Look. I won't say that I'm proud of this? But it's written ~~and will most like be rewritten and expanded and made better. The point is: FP met Gladys while he was away for boot camp. I've had this head canon for so long and I fully intend to flesh it the fuck out.~~


End file.
